French TV Pageant Whittled Down to Two

By Thomas Varela

Zuma Press

A voter sizes up the lineup of 10 candidates from the first round of France’s presidential election.

Life just got a bit easier for French television networks.

Up until the second round on May 6, France’s broadcasting watchdog dictates they must grant an equal amount of air time to the two remaining candidates in the presidential elections. That might sound like a delicate balancing act, but it’s a lot easier than having to give the exact same amount of time to 10 candidates.

For the five weeks leading up to the first round of France’s presidential elections, French broadcasters had to do just that. That meant for instance, equal broadcast time for President Nicolas Sarkozy, Socialist challenger François Hollande, and every other candidate down the line, including the extreme-fringe Jacques Cheminade.

Mr. Cheminade garnered 0.2% of the vote on Sunday. Among his policies: a pledge to finance space travel to establish human presence on Mars and the moon. But French broadcasters — the rules don’t apply to newspapers — had to treat him as if he was just as likely to become France’s next president as all other nine candidates.

A week before the first round, the broadcasting authority issued a statement saying television and radio stations succeeded in respecting the controversial law. But it noted that overall, on the main TV channels, candidates had only half the total airtime their predecessors enjoyed back in 2007 in the last presidential election during the comparable equality period, suggesting debate was actually being quashed by the rule.

The criticism of the regulation was so widespread that it was even shared by members of the Conseil supérieur de l’Audiovisuel, the broadcasting authority.

In an interview with French Daily Le Monde in March, the regulator’s president, Michel Boyon, said such tight rules were “not healthy” for political debate. He said he favored a shorter period of two weeks for rules imposing strict equality of air time between candidates, but added that the law would likely need to be changed in order to loosen the rule

The system in France reflects the fact that political advertising of any kind is banned, shifting the onus to the broadcasting authority to act as a referee ensuring equal exposure.